For the first time ever: a single wholesale price for electricity in Finland, Sweden and Estonia

Today is a historic day in the electricity market in that there is a uniform wholesale price for electricity in each hour in Finland, Sweden and Estonia. The average price of the day is 40.58 € per megawatt hour. For about a month now, the Estonian market has been part of the Nordic electricity exchange, and trading has started fluently.

The extensive uniform price area is an indication of the progress of market integration to the Baltic countries. The pivotal objective of the Estlink price area introduced at the beginning of April is to integrate the electricity market in Estonia with the market in Finland and the other Nordic countries and to create a reliable market price for electricity initially within Estonia and later throughout the Baltic countries.

Fingrid and its Estonian counterpart Elering rented approx. 250 megawatts of transmission capacity from the owners of the Estlink connection for use by Nord Pool Spot. The total capacity of the link is 350 MW. The market has primarily utilised the full transmission capacity made available to Elspot trading. Typically, it was only in situations where the price and consumption of electricity in Estonia were at their peak that the full capacity was not utilised. On the other hand, the transmission link between Estonia and Finland was the most congested cross-border connection within the entire market area in the review period.

The prices in Estonia and Finland have been different from each other for more than 80 per cent of the time, which shows that the ongoing EstLink 2 transmission link project is really needed. Elering and Fingrid have also decided to launch intraday trading between Estonia and Finland as of 3 May 2010.

Further information:
Juha Hiekkala tel. +358 (0)40 553 9898
Jyrki Uusitalo tel. +358 (0)30 030 395 5181